I enjoyed Sharon Bolton’s thriller The Craftsman, but I have to say that I had lots more problems with Dead Woman Walking.
Jessica and her sister Isabel are on a hot-air balloon excursion in Northumberland National Park with 10 other passengers when they pass low over a farm and see a man beating a girl over the head with a rock. The man has a rifle, and once he notices them, he starts firing at them. They get away, but then they find that the pilot’s head has been shot off. In trying to flee and land the balloon, they make several mistakes and end up crashing.
The man has followed them through the forest on an ATV, so by the time the police get there, all the passengers that can be found are dead, apparently from the crash. Jessica, however, is missing. The police can’t figure out why she seems to be fleeing rather than trying to contact them, especially as it turns out she is also a police officer.
The plot switches between the investigation by Detective Alex Maldanado, the past history of Jessica and Isabel, and the hunt for Jessica by the murderer. It is written, especially at first, in short chapters and paragraphs which I think are supposed to heighten the urgency but instead irritate. I didn’t really buy that a man firing a rifle from the ground could shoot off the pilot’s head, but even if he could, I found that detail unnecessarily gruesome. There is enough to indicate he’s a ruthless killer.
None of the characters are well defined, even Jessica and Isabel. There are family secrets confusing the issue, and Jessica’s investigation to find out about. And speaking of which, the odds of the balloon going over this particular farm seem very low, even given my knowledge having read the book.
Finally, Bolton has a big reveal at the end, only I guessed it about halfway through the book.
Although Bolton starts with an interesting idea, it’s not a very thrilling book. In fact, it dragged for me in several places.
What? Me Read? 